This message is brought to you by Nuveen.
How would you invest if you knew the future was watching?
At Nuveen, this isn't a theoretical question.
It's a perspective that comes from navigating 125 years of market cycles, using foresight to innovate and adapt to the changing needs of investors, and remaining steadfast in the pursuit of lasting performance.
Nuveen. Invest like the future is watching.
Visit nuveen .com .future to learn more.
Investing involves risk.
Principal loss is possible.
Good morning from the Financial Times.
Today is Monday, April 14th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
The Trump administration is sending mixed messages to big tech, and US banks are riding out the market storm – at least for now.
Plus, what happens when the American government goes after universities?
The next few weeks, we're going to see significant readouts of the impact of this longer term.
I'm Kasia Brosalian, and here's the news you need to start your day.
Personal electronics might only be exempt from U .S. tariffs for a little while longer.
At least, that's what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik had to say yesterday.
That's right, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals will have a tariff model in order to encourage them to re -shore, to be built in America.
Let me back up and explain.
Late on Friday, the Trump administration said it was excluding things like smartphones and laptops from the massive quote, reciprocal tariffs on China.
That was big news for companies like Apple, which makes roughly 80 percent of its iPhones phones in the country.
But then on Sunday, Lutnick warned in an interview with ABC that the semiconductors inside these devices could still eventually face levies.
These are included in the semiconductor tariffs that are coming and the pharmaceuticals are coming, those two areas are coming in the next month or two.
So this is not like a permanent sort of exemption.
He's just clarifying that these are not available to be negotiated away by countries.
These are things that are national security that we need to be made in America.
US President Donald Trump also tried to play down his exemptions.
He wrote on Truth Social that, quote, nobody is getting off the hook.
The announcements add to the global uncertainty around the administration's new trade policies.
JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo reported quarterly earnings on Friday after a week filled with wild swings in the markets.
But so far, it looks like all that volatility has actually benefited these banks.
Here to explain why is the FD's US banking editor Joshua Franklin.
Hey, Josh. Hi there.
Yeah, so just tell me about Friday's report.
Yeah, so I guess you could choose to look at it glass half full or glass half empty.
The glass half full version is all this volatility that's been happening in the early months of the Trump administration has meant that clients of these banks have been trading a lot around events.
Volatile markets are great for banks because they're the ones who facilitate a lot of this trading activity, kind of financing trades for other investors like hedge funds and big asset managers.
So, banks had just a blowout first quarter for their trading businesses, especially trading equities.
JPMorgan, which is the biggest bank in the U .S. by assets and deposits, they had a 9 % rise in profits, but the standout performance was its equities trading business, revenues rising almost 50 % from a year earlier to 3 .8 billion.
Alright, so that's the glass half full version.
Now, what's the glass half empty?
The glass half empty version is the rest of the year is really uncertain.
in terms of the trajectory of the US economy under Trump.
And so banks tend to perform pretty well in a rising economy when people have a lot of certainty about the direction of things.
People are borrowing.
There's an expectation that a lot of that money that they borrow is gonna be paid back.
A lot of uncertainty about all of that right now.
So the rest of the year is a little bit more cautious for these guys.
Can you just walk me through a little bit more what all the economic fallout from the tariffs will be for banks specifically?
Like what are we hearing from some of them?
Well, we heard from JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, who's one of the most influential voices on Wall Street and in corporate America.
He was pretty cautious in his outlook, talked about the considerable turbulence that the US economy was facing, potential negatives of tariffs and trade wars.
You are seeing some warning signs, especially in credit card lending.
These guys are big credit card lenders for JP Morgan, which is the biggest credit card bank in the US.
The portion of the credit card loans that they mark as unrecoverable is at a 13 year high, so you're seeing kind of a few more signs of strain for everyday Americans.
So we're sort of seeing this split screen here, at least for these banks that reported on Friday.
Now Josh, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs will report earnings later this week.
What are you looking out for there?
So it's gonna be really interesting with Goldman to see whether or not they really benefited as well or as much as some of these other banks on the trading side.
And, you know, few banks have their finger on the pulse of what's going on in investment banking as much as Goldman Sachs does.
So we'll see kind of what they're talking about with clients, what their pipeline is looking like.
There'd been a lot of hopes at the beginning of the year that 2025 was just going to be gangbusters for investment banking, but all this uncertainty has had a big chilling effect on dealmaking.
And so that also for the rest of the year, very uncertain how that's going to go.
And then Bank of America as well, obviously, after JP Morgan, they're the second biggest bank in the US by assets and deposit.
So what they're seeing in terms of the health of the US consumer is going to be really interesting to see.
That's the FT's Joshua Franklin.
Thanks Josh. Thanks very much. The UK is expected to sign a defense agreement with the European Union.
It would allow British arms companies to participate in a joint loan program to secure military equipment.
The EU and the UK have been cooperating on security a lot more since the war in Ukraine started.
And now President Donald Trump's threats to walk away from NATO have helped bring them even closer.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will host a summit in London next month to discuss the pact.
That will be the first time EU leaders have met there since Brexit.
The defence agreement could also pave the way for the two sides to sign other accords on issues like energy and migration.
The U .S. is home to some of the best universities in the world, and jobs at these institutions earn high demand.
But recent attacks by the Trump administration have some professors looking for positions overseas, and now there's a risk of a brain drain.
The FT's global education editor Andrew Jack is here to talk with me about it.
Hey, Andrew. Hi. So first, just put this into context for me.
What kind of pressure are US universities facing from the Trump administration?
Financially, there's been a whole series of actions by the Trump administration in recent weeks, both around cutting federal grants that they perceive as part of the culture wars, so anything that mentions climate or diversity, for example, and then around the overheads or the indirect costs associated with grants, notably linked to health research, saying the maximum they can cover is 15 % of the overall grant level.
So that's created some huge financial pressures on universities.
And then in parallel, there's been some pretty aggressive actions, notably accusing the universities of failing to react sufficiently to alleged anti -Semitism on campus, particularly in the context of the protests following October 7, 23, which pitted, of course, pro -Palestinian against pro -Israeli student demonstrators.
So that's all coming together now.
And what kind of impact is this pressure campaign having on the morale of university professors?
There's a big debate.
Of course there are some in the faculty who believe that for a long time universities have have increasingly excluded those with more right -wing views.
On the other hand, many faculty feel that this is an attempt essentially by the Trump administration to restrict academic freedom and freedom of speech and then the financial pressures I say which are limiting their flexibility to research to hire new graduate students to expand their activities and university administrations which are torn between those external pressures and trying to minimize the damage to universities versus their own faculty and students who often feel they're being excluded by debates and decisions by university leaders and trustees.
0h0s0c Well, how's that tension playing out on the ground?
I mean, what are you seeing from professors, academics and students in that regard?
So the next few weeks we're going to see significant readouts of the impact of this longer term.
Students are going through their cycles of application.
And so by the sort of late spring, early summer, we'll start to see where the student numbers are falling.
We're going to see also the next round of donations from alumni and other external grant givers, philanthropists, and so on.
And then internally the pressures on academics, a number of whom, as we've reported, and others had, who were at least looking to new opportunities, the possibility either of quitting academia or perhaps moving to another country such as Canada or elsewhere in Europe as institutions there actively reach out and see an opportunity potentially to recruit and to offer a different environment in which for these academics to work.
So ultimately, do you think that we could see an actual brain drain from the US?
I think we're certainly already seeing a brain trickle.
How far that really turns into a torrent of academics fleeing or deciding to take up opportunities in other countries is more open to question, partly because of that huge disproportionate wealth, and resource, and reputation of U .S. universities, and indeed the job opportunities that exist in the wider U .S. economy, notably in science, you know, areas where there are big investments in laboratories, in equipment, in complex teams. It's quite difficult in many more resource -strapped higher education institutions, whether in Canada or Europe, to compete.
That was the FT's Andrew Jack.
Thanks, Andrew. Thank you.
And finally, for all us workers out there, we probably wouldn't say no to a bit more appreciation.
You know, a pat on the back for a job well done.
Now for all of you bosses listening, there's a robot for that.
The Irish tech company WorkHuman is using artificial intelligence to help people dole out some really nice compliments.
The so -called social recognition tool allows managers to summon a virtual assistant, and that assistant will help them find the perfect words to praise their employees.
BP, Cisco and LinkedIn are already using the platform.
You can read more on all of these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes.
This has been your daily FT News Briefing.
Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.
Just ask The Capital One Bank Guy.
It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way.
He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too.
Ah really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply. see CapitalOne .com slash bank Capital One and a member FDIC.
Join FD strategies in partnership with Privacy Sandbox as we sit down with the people shaping the future of digital advertising in our new podcast Privacy by Design.
We speak to publishers, ad -tech experts, and industry leaders who share real -world insights on first -party data and making Privacy First advertising work.
You can listen to Privacy by Design on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Please note that the FT Newsroom was not involved in the production of this podcast.
